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The time has come to say it. So here goes. Government employment – especially federal – has, in too many cases, become a haven from the unemployment lines for too damned many people. In addition, holding elective office – especially federal – has become a haven for too damned many idiots who’ve proven they should be unemployed.

Strong stuff? You bet! But sometimes the total incompetency in both classifications is so overpowering you can’t reach any other conclusion. What follows is my small offerings of proof(s).

Take Ebola. Within hours of the arrival in a Texas hospital of the first known case in this country, Gov. Ricky Perry – trying to boost his hopeless run for president – leaped before the cameras to claim “I’m proud Texas has become the location for this emergency. We’re the best equipped state in the nation to deal with this – we’ve the best medical resources and the best know-how to defeat this before it becomes a national disaster.” Oh, Hell yes.

Within 24 hours, we found out the “best medical resources” in Texas had seen the guy and turned him loose with some pills. Seems the nurses with the “best medical resources” had an intake computer program with the right questions but it didn’t “talk” to the one the doctors use.

Then, with four of the man’s relatives imprisoned in a small apartment, the State of Texas ordered them to move and a hazmat team activated to delouse the place. Except. The Texas health department could find no place in the whole damned state to relocate the people. And the hazmat team was stopped from acting because it had only a license to transport and dispose of the garbage but no Texas permit to remove it. A private citizen found a new “home” for the sequestered four and the hazmat folks waited 48 hours before a permit was issued. But the State of Texas? “Best equipped?” Hell yes. And Perry left for a weekend campaigning in Iowa.

CDC and Ebola. CDC top brass has been living on TV with complete assurances our health system “is the best in the world,” “it’s working” and “this will soon be behind us.” Guess they were too busy in front of the cameras to catch the Texas mess. They also weren’t truthful about those congressional jackasses who arbitrarily cut the CDC budget through “sequestration” and, since those carefully-designed-but-very-expensive CDC programs to handle emergencies like Ebola hadn’t been used, they were cut back or eliminated. Don’t need ‘em ‘cause they ain’t been used, according to the Louie Gomer (SHAZAM) – er Gohmert – School of Deep Think. Texas again. Hell yes.

VA health care. Anyone else want to jump in here? The billions we’ve spent have propped up a system rife with duplicitous civil “servants” who’ve been a cancer within. Too few medical professionals – too few programs to take care of the new medical and psychological problems veterans suffer from these days and an indifferent congress cutting budgets with no regard for the human suffering caused by their indifferent and arbitrary actions.

How about the IRS? A couple of offices of people targeting certain political groups (left and right) for special audits. Administrative perversion on that scale can’t survive without a lot of folks knowing what’s going on. Whether they participate or not.

The Pentagon. Hundreds of examples. But one will do nicely. No one in the Pentagon – NO ONE – can tell taxpayers how much equipment the military owns and where it is. Or whether it still exists. No one. The claim is inventory is too big to – wait for it – inventory.

How about the CIA? Read the other day CIA wasn’t aware of ISSA’s strength or size before things hit the fan in Iraq. “We underestimated,” said the Director. Oh Hell yes. We got the same crap when Bush-the-Junior was lying us into Iraq in the first place. Then Syria came along and another “surprise” at CIA. How about those riots in Egypt? And murders at Benghazi? Terrorist sponsorship was “news to the CIA!

Then the CIA “underestimated” the Russia-Ukraine mess. “Didn’t see that coming,” was the response. Aside from listening to our phone calls and reading our emails, what the Hell does the CIA do? Why is that spy agency alone in not knowing what’s happening?

There’s a lot more. And it’s not confined to the above miscreants. I’ve called local, county and state offices over the last few years looking for help in their areas of responsibility. I can’t count the times the response was “we don’t do that any more because of budget cuts” or “we’re too short-staffed to do all the things we used to do.” Then what’re the people left doing if they’re not doing the jobs that were the reason for their employment in those offices?

This whole loony and totally crazy illogical crap of cut, cut, cut in all areas of government is gutting what’s left. Citizens needing help with basic necessities are hitting brick walls trying to find someone to do what’s needed. People are hungry. People are homeless. People are dying. Families are being broken up. We taxpayers footing the bill are, in far too many instances, not getting what we’re paying for. If this country has ever truly had “taxation without representation” it’s happening now. The gutless political hypocrisy of “sequestration” – created by too many in congress who don’t know how government works and who’re operating in some sort of ignorant vacuum of a phony political theology – is eating necessary government functions.

What’s needed – and we’ve needed it for a very long time – is a total reappraisal of what government is – what it should be – what it must do to maintain the “common good” – what is required of it for the peace and security of the nation – all these things and more. Efforts to deal with our 21st century challenges are being crippled and our leadership in so many of the world’s activities is being undermined.

Until that reappraisal and the massive, intellectual and political work is done by newer and better qualified Americans, too much of our government will continue to be a haven for the otherwise unemployed. That should not be taken as condemnation of those in government who are honestly trying to do their jobs. But it damned well should be taken as a flat out condemnation of the intellectual idiocy and complete ignorance of a political system too full of both.